ACW

Sunday, 24 July 2016

Writing levels: Global, Structural, and Language

Call me slow-witted if you like, but I’ve only recently
realized that when we talk about writing we are really talking about three
distinct, though interconnected, things. If you start reading this and quickly
see that I am merely restating what greater minds have apprehended long ago, by
all means stop!

First there is the Global level. When we say that Tolstoy
wrote War and Peace or Jane Austen wrote
Pride and Prejudice, we refer to
the whole process, from the first glimmer of an idea to the last page of corrected
proofs. But in particular we mean the creative act whereby Tolstoy and Austen
invented imaginary people, places, institutions, and events. It doesn’t matter
that there was a real Napoleonic War: the one in the book is Tolstoy’s
Napoleonic War, whether or not he has faithfully modelled it on history.
Writing, at this highest level, is thinking up a whole world of events, even if
they are minute domestic occurrences, in such a way that they come together to
make a story.

It’s an interesting fact that while a skeleton summary of
the story reflects what the writer is essentially up to, the author
simultaneously has in mind a vast catalogue of imaginary things that relate to
it. ‘A boy and girl belonging to different families that are conducting a violent
feud in their city fall in love, try to get together in another city, but are
caught by their own stratagems and both die.’ An inadequate summary of Romeo
and Juliet, but this is something like the
essential idea in Shakespeare’s mind. At the same time, putting her invented
world together, the author dreams up all kinds of facts about it and its
inhabitants which may or may not form an important part of the finished work.
She might have been able to tell you what school Mr Darcy went to or which Shakespeare
play he liked best, but have decided that her story doesn’t need to mention
these things. The creative process summons up a whole landscape, a potential
history book.

Second comes the Structural level. Even if you are writing a
true history you have to leave out the majority of events that you know about.
You do not say what Winston Churchill had for breakfast every day; only on the
one day when he choked on a fishbone in his kedgeree and missed a crucial
meeting of the War Cabinet (I made this up). To give existence to the narrative
you have invented you pick out the crucial episodes. You select people and
their appearances, decide who is the protagonist, and so on. You angle your
presentation of events. Are we going to see Agamemnon murdered or will a
messenger come in and report it? Or will Clytemnestra enter covered in blood?
Imagine Pride and Prejudice without the
unexpected return of Darcy to Pemberley while Elizabeth is seeing over it! All
this is obvious, I know. But my point is that this is writing—the central activity, the art of storytelling—and
yet, no physical writing need
happen (even if in practice it usually does).

Lastly we come to the level of Language. Obviously, you have
to communicate the scenes and episodes to your audience. The story could be
acted on the spot or even mimed, but we are writers, so we express it in
language. And the boundary between Structure and Language is extremely fuzzy.
The selection of actions naturally determines the words: I’m likely to use the
word ‘messenger’ or ‘servant’ if I have the murder reported. But equally the
choice of words has a backwash effect on the structure and atmosphere of the
story. It’ll be different if the messenger comes in and says ‘O woe, howl, for
the sanctuary is defiled’ or if he comes in and says ‘Hells bells, the old
bastard’s bleeding all over the bloody atrium.’

But because the Language level is the level of physical
writing, i.e. putting down one word and not another, this is the level that we
often take as the ‘writing’, and we say ‘this book is beautifully written’. But do we only mean that the choice and
arrangement of words is beautiful? I can think of books in which the Language
is first-class but the narrative Structure is tedious. For me, Virginia Woolf’s
novels fall into this category. On the other hand, there are thousands of books
with a story line that keeps you on the edge of your seat, but written in
dreary, turgid, clichéd, or slipshod prose. Messrs Archer and Brown spring to
mind, but it’s unfair to single them out.

These three levels—or perhaps they are actually concentric
circles—are, I think, useful tools for thinking about the activity of writing;
in particular, when we are concerned with the morality and spirituality of what
we write. The kinds of thing that we find controversial crop up at different
levels, or take different forms at different levels. So-called Swearwords exist
at the Language level. But to have people use Bad Language is a Structural
decision, and to tell a story about people who use such language is a Global
decision.To take another topic,
one Christian might devise a narrative that enshrines their beliefs, by having
the story culminate in act of repentance and faith by the major villain. Another
Christian might simply include, as part of the Structure, Christian characters
who behave both well and badly as Christians do.